


After All These Years

by bramletabercrombie



Category: Colbert Report RPF, Fake News RPF, The Daily Show RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Power Imbalance, Semi-unrequited love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 08:16:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3320429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramletabercrombie/pseuds/bramletabercrombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stephen’s talent is very apparent to everybody, but if you’d been to his 50th birthday party and you saw the love bomb he was surrounded in — I said to my wife, 'I will guarantee you this party spawns a thousand arguments on the drive home.' Everybody got in the car that night with their spouse and it was, 'Why don’t you love me like people love Stephen?!' Or, 'Why can’t you be a kindhearted and good individual like Stephen Colbert!?'"<br/>— Jon Stewart</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All These Years

**Author's Note:**

> Jon's POV, well, his second-person POV. The quote in the summary comes from Jon's interview in New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/jon-stewart-rosewater-in-conversation.html

You want him, and for the most part, you have him. In a very real sense, one for which you're truly thankful, he's actually yours. Still, it's not enough. You're not sure whether "enough" is even possible. The fact that you get to work with him, make him laugh, touch him, hold him—it's everything you could want. But you still want more. 

It's so rare for you to get as much of him as you'd like—a text when you want a call, a visit when you want a rendezvous, a kiss when you want a fuck. The very rarity of these small moments of satisfaction makes them infinitely more valuable. You've never spent a whole weekend together. You fantasize about going away with him to just be alone. Your time together is always so rushed, so your ultimate fantasy is unlimited time to just explore and appreciate him with no interruptions, no stifling or constraints.

What you have gotten to do is spend the night together on a few occasions; you swear you could recount each of those nights in real time, if not even slower. You cherish the small details of these rare memories. You take them out and replay them like a favorite album; it's always the same old songs, but every time you listen to them, you hear something new. 

You don't so much _find_ time to be alone with him as you do _invent_ it: stories have to be synchronized, schedules rearranged, events retroactively added or subtracted, just to explain away the lies to your families and coworkers. So much manipulation is needed that when it finally works out, you're often in such disbelief that you almost let the moment slip away. 

Fortunately, he's always there to remind you. He seduces you every time and you can hardly believe your luck. The first time, all that happened was that you kissed; the next few times, all that happened was that he went down on you; so you felt like you won the lottery when you finally got to return to the favor. Typical Stephen. That was just his way: without trying, he would make you feel grateful to be able to please him. You would become addicted to making him happy. He would fuck you and his pleasure became more important than yours, or maybe, it _became_ yours. 

When you're finally with him, at first, it's almost anticlimactic: you fantasize about this moment so often that when it's really happening, it feels like you're watching the same film yet again. But all at once you realize that this is no movie, and the reality is so much better than the fantasy ever could be. You've come to this realization so many times, and yet, out of self-preservation most likely, you always manage to convince yourself afterward that it couldn't possibly have been as wonderful as you remember.

You would be willing to settle for a quickie if it was all you could get—to you, a little something is better than nothing. But Stephen, he can't ever bring himself to be lazy or to hold back. As with everything in his life, he's either going to commit fully or not do it at all. Consequently, you only have sex when there's enough time and privacy to take your time with it and do it right, which is exceedingly rare. But when it finally does happen, you have to admit that the cathartic release is worth the wait.  
___

From day one, your gravitation toward him always felt like a natural process, a chemical reaction. His scent, the texture of his skin, and his graceful motion appeal to you in a way that you find difficult to analyze because it's so utterly self-evident. Without trying, you became an expert on the nuances of his manner, his voice, his gestures and tics. Even now, you still find yourself by turns delighted, amused, and stirred by each element in your secret catalogue of his innate mechanisms.

While your initial attraction to him may have been a reflex, knowing what to do with it was a different story. Way back then, you immediately knew you desired closeness, touch, but you felt lost when you tried to narrow down exactly what you wanted to do. You dealt with this by gradually experimenting with different types of intimacy; luckily, these were welcomed, instantly and with all the sureness you lacked. When you extended an uncertain hand, he clasped it warmly with both of his own. When you dared to put your arm around him, he encircled your shoulders and pulled you in tighter. When you furtively kissed his cheek, he held your face, searched your eyes, and placed his lips to yours, somehow intuiting your desires better than you could yourself.  
___

It's not as though he's perfect, not even close. You're well acquainted with his foul moods, his petty whines; he makes bad jokes that fall flat; he can be annoying, gross, and boring. But his worst is tolerable, and his best, well. At his best he's simply beautiful. 

When he's at his funniest, smartest, most handsome, most kind—it's breathtaking. You just sit back and openly admire. It's the one time you don't even have to worry about discretion, because everyone else is feeling the same thing for him, too. 

You have no choice but to share him, but the funny thing is, you don't even mind. Normally, you can be just as protective and possessive as the next guy. But you feel no jealousy regarding your relationship with him, and no envy regarding his relationships with others. You know for a fact that what you have with him is unlike what anyone else has with him, even his wife, and that's enough. Besides, it would feel wrong to keep him to yourself; it's in the very nature of his gift that it has to be spread. He lives to make others happy.

All that notwithstanding, you still wouldn't mind if you could escape the alibis, deceit, and guilt. You never wish you could marry him or run off with him, but you often wish that you could just be open and honest about all aspects of your love for him. In your contemplative moods, it strikes you how sad it is that such a happy and simple thing would inevitably cause heartbreak and scandal if it weren't kept secret. In your practical moods, you rededicate yourself to discretion and prudence.  
____

Logically, you know you'll never get all that you want. For starters, he can't possibly give back as much love as he receives. There simply aren't enough hours in a day, days in a lifetime. This is a problem that is unique to Stephen: only he could attract so much love and affection that it would be impossible to give it all back. He's just that lovable, always has been. 

And you don't mind the imbalance, not really. You understand that relationships are a give-and-take and are never perfectly symmetrical. And that's how it should be—you couldn't love a mirror of yourself as much as you love him, so it's good that he's different from you. He's better than you, honestly: you know it, he knows it, everyone around you knows it. Everyone feels a little inadequate around him, but instead of holding that against him, they love him all the more for it. He inspires them to become better, to become more like him.

And yet…it's hard to admit, but you can't deny that some resentment has crept in. He does love you back, which is absolutely wonderful. But somehow he doesn't love you enough. In your secret, selfish, dark moments, you think he could do much better than he does. If he really loved you like you loved him, he would do more for you, spend more time with you. Call you as often as you call on him, visit you as much as you come to him. Apparently, he just doesn't love you quite enough.

At this point, you've come to resent how much time and energy and attention you give him, without receiving as much in return. You're devoting yourself, your mind, your body, your emotions, all to him—can't he give you a little more? Haven't you earned it through your acts of devotion and praise, your unwavering support and appreciation? After everything you've done and felt for him, why can't he do and feel the same for you?

Oftentimes you get fed up with it all. Sometimes you truly hate him. After all this time, he's a part of your life, and in many ways, it's a part you'd be better off without. You tell yourself you'll cut him off as soon as it gets to be overwhelming. And yet, you know you're already overwhelmed, and you'll never really do it. It's impossible. He means too much to you. Whenever you take stock of the best things in your life, your love for him is right up there, with everything else vital to your survival. 

The fact is, you'll love him even if you have to keep it secret forever, even if you were caught. You'd love him even if he ended it, even if he rejected you, if he hurt you purposefully. It's never been about having your feelings reciprocated, it's always been about the pure adoration and admiration you have for him.

You know that, above all else, you're simply lucky to love someone so much. Throughout your rocky childhood, your troubled adolescence, and your difficult early adulthood, the same lesson was continually reinforced: that the things you love don't always love you back. Various romantic partners, your family, soccer, comedy—the things you value most are what make life worth living, but they're also the source of your biggest disappointments and rejections. These things couldn't hurt you so much if you didn't love them so much. Because of this, you've often taken refuge in apathy and disassociation in order to avoid the pain. But you've always gone back to the things you love, and you always will, because they're all you have. And after all these years, it's quite apparent that Stephen is all you need.


End file.
